So much for the (myth of the) honest brokerListening to Stephen Harper’s speech to the Knesset on Monday, Sun Media’s David Akin was taken aback to hear the Prime Minister (as he heard it) equate “criticism that selectively condemns only the Jewish state,” and other brands of anti-Israel sentiment, with anti-Semitism. “Basically, in Harper’s formulation, you’re an anti-Semite if you criticize Israel,” writes Akin. “And no, I don’t believe I’m exaggerating.”

Postmedia’s Andrew Coyne does not agree: “As [Harper] said, ‘no state is beyond legitimate questioning or criticism,’ nor is ‘criticism of Israeli government policy … necessarily anti-Semitic.’ But some of it is,” Coyne agrees. “The question is how much.” Coyne suspects much of the disproportionate criticism Israel endures in fact stems “not so much [from] hatred of Israel, or of Jews, but of the West, of ‘us.’ … In this it is no different that any other symbol of Western democracy, the opposition it arouses merely a substratum of the heady undergraduate experience of discovering that, hey, we’re the bad guys.”

That’s well said. But for the record, we reserve the right to criticize any nation, person or entity without going out of our way to criticize every other nation, person or entity who might be guilty of similar transgressions.

Tasha Kheiriddin heard it as Akin heard it. But whatever the drawbacks, she thinks such strident support for Israel could be far more useful from a diplomatic standpoint than our previous “honest broker” approach — particularly since no one seemed to want us to honestly broker anything. “Having Benjamin Netenyahu’s ear and the full confidence of his government means that Harper can offer the counsel of a close ally, and call the Israelis out — privately — if they make moves that lead away from peace,” Kheiriddin writes for iPolitics. We suppose that’s true, though we somehow can’t picture Harper actually doing that.

If Germany can publicly hash out “policy disagreements” with Israel then Canada certainly ought to be able to, Shira Herzog argues in TheGlobe and Mail, noting that Harper’s public statements are far more one-sided than “official Canadian policy papers on contentious issue such as refugees, Jerusalem and settlements — all critical to the talks currently under way.” “It may suit Netanyahu’s agenda to have Canada stay silent on some of the toughest issues,” says Herzog. “But that may just serve to undermine Israel in some of the very forums, such as the Group of Eight or the European Union, where it’s now weakened because of its own policies.”

The Globe‘s editorialists think not. “Canada’s ability to weigh on the outcome of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process is approximately nil,” in their view. “And there’s an upside to that: Canada can afford to have a principled foreign policy.” The problem is, they think such a principled foreign policy would have to include Harper saying at least something about the new settlements in the West Bank.

André Pratte, writing on behalf of La Presse, agrees. He notes that Netanyahu praised Harper’s “courage.” But in Pratte’s view, “real courage” would have involved Harper passing on many Canadians’ misgivings about Israel’s commitment to peace.

The Toronto Star‘s editorialists are dismayed that Harper did not adhere to their 102-point plan for his trip to Israel. The Star‘s Chantal Hébert compares Harper’s relationship with Israel to Pierre Trudeau’s relationship with Cuba, which we’re not sure was a worthwhile undertaking. And Lawrence Martin, writing in the Globe, isn’t sure Harper’s very public pro-Israeli stance is worth the friction it adds to the Ottawa-Washington relationship.

Liberals in disarrayIn the view of the Montreal Gazette‘s Don Macpherson, Quebec Liberal leader Philippe Couillard’s bumbling on the “values” file, the continuing popularity of the Parti Québécois’ secularism charter and a boost for the PQ in a new poll — summarized here by the National Post‘s Graeme Hamilton — all increase the chances of Pauline Marois calling a snap election, in which she might well win a majority. As such, the Gazette‘s editorialists implore Couillard to pull his thumb out and muster a “more coherent and rational argument against Bill 60.” It would also help if he stuck to that argument for more than a week.

Mathieu Bock-Côté, writing in Le Journal de Montréal, doesn’t think much of the Quebec Bar Association’s case against the secularism charter — which is basically that it’s illegal. So what? “Do we live in a dictatorship under Trudeau’s Charter of Rights?” he asks. Well … no. We suppose not.

Also in Le Journal, Richard Martineau dances a merry jig at Fatima Houda-Pepin’s resignation from the Liberal caucus (she supports the secularism charter). And he notes that the Liberals didn’t think much of the Bar Association’s negative opinion on Bill 78, which sought to quell those ridiculous student protests. “Other times, other allegiances,” he quips. Fair point. Of course, back then, the PQ liked the Bar’s opinion.

Duly notedThe Calgary Herald‘s Don Braid hopes Alison Redford gets a chance to meet Al Gore one-on-one in Davos to confront him on his “many exaggerations” about the oilsands — exaggerations with “made Neil Young possible,” in Braid’s view. “It’s doubtful the singer would have likened the sands to ‘Hiroshima’ if Gore hadn’t already called them ‘an open sewer’ and a threat ‘to the future of human civilization.'” At this point, though, Braid suspects Redford may have to “pull a John Tortorella” to make it happen. Make it so, ma’am!

Because this column is written on Friday, I have no idea what luminary graces the front page of today’s weekend edition of the Globe & Mail newspaper. But I am still recovering from their choice for the marquee spot last Saturday, when I saw, gleaming at me from a newsstand, a full, front-page photograph of Al Gore.

Such iconography suggests world importance on the scale of Nelson Mandela. Al Gore falls short of that level of epicness by several orders of magnitude.

In truth, Mr. Gore’s star has been fading for years, which is why the Globe’s front-page looked a decade old. His eco-alarmism is stale. The urgency of his early appeal has decayed into mere stridency. The very subject of global warming has grown more complicated.

Related

Which raises the question of how relevant Al Gore is anymore. Has he been saying anything new to earn such a front-page tribute?

As far as I could tell, out of the fogbank of predictable platitudes and eco-mush he served up to his eager Canadian interviewer, the big “news” was that Gore slagged Alberta and the oil sands. He accused Alberta and those who support its oil industry, and the thousands and thousands of Canadians who work at it, of treating the atmosphere of sweet Mother Earth as an “open sewer.” He insisted on the point repeatedly.

Well, stop the presses indeed. Bashing Alberta is every lazy global warming environmentalist’s equivalent of morning prayer. Fort McMurray has been cast to play Hellmouth, the emblem of all that is terrible, in the propaganda offensives of the Greens and the Gores.

Does Mr. Gore drop into other friendly countries — the nations of the Persial Gulf, for instance — to insult them and demonize their endeavours?

Whatever else carbon dioxide is doing to our planet, it emphatically is not turning the atmosphere into a toilet. But in any event, from a former Vice-President can we not expect a finer tone and a more civilized manner of speaking? Does Mr. Gore drop into other friendly countries — the nations of the Persial Gulf, for instance — to insult them and demonize their endeavours?

There are a few questions I’d like to have seen put to Mr. Gore by those who sought him out. For instance: Does his commercial relationship with the absolute and hereditary emirate of Qatar, whose wealth is built on oil, gas and petrochemicals, in any way colour his view of Canada’s oil?

Has Mr. Gore lectured Qatar or its Emir? If so, let’s see the front-page news coverage from the Gulf.

Environmental reporting is in far too many cases the willing handmaiden of the movement it is supposed to investigate and cover

Did receiving $500-million dollars from Qatar — $100-million dollars for himself alone — on the sale of Current TV, a pathetically performing cable channel owned by Mr. Gore and others, in any way soften Mr. Gore’s opinion of the carbon sourced to that country?

Do not expect that oxymoron — an environmental reporter — ever to ask these questions. Environmental reporters approach Mr. Gore (or the inflammatory James Hansen, late of NASA), like suffering pilgrims approaching an oracle: all submission and solicitation.

Environmental reporting is in far too many cases the willing handmaiden of the movement it is supposed to investigate and cover. Hence, Al Gore is almost always treated as a disinterested player, a voice of neutral reason, where he is massively engaged, both politically and financially, in the central issue on which he propounds.

Finally, on the Canadian part of this story, where it the political bite-back? Not just from Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver — who at least returns fire, and deserves all praise for enduring the scorn of the enlightened when he does so. Where are the premiers of other provinces — my own among them — who have so benefited from the oil boom in Alberta, and whose citizens have found work and welcome in that province?

Fort McMurray may be in Alberta. But as Jesse Kline has strongly argued in the National Post recently, it is a dazzling and profitable engineering endeavor of which all Canadians should be proud. We Canadians should be at least as eager to defend our own interests as Al Gore and his fans at the Globe & Mail are to denigrate them.

The National Post re-imagines a week in the life of a newsmaker. Today, Tristin Hopper looks at the week through the eyes of environmentalist and former U.S. vice president Al Gore.

Monday
This afternoon, I met with a committee of American climate change activists in my office, taking pains to ensure that I held court from well behind my sustainable-oak desk, lest their patchouli stench become overwhelming. “Mr. Gore,” they said, “we appreciate what you’ve done, but we think it might be time that you, well, stepped out of the limelight; people are finding it harder to take environmental advice from a multi-millionaire who makes lucrative business deals with a petro-state like Qatar.” “Is that so?” I said, before triggering a trap door beneath them. Nobody lectures Al Gore on environmental advocacy, least of all a bunch of granola-munching tree huggers.

Tuesday
A very productive morning with my investment advisor. We put a few million into hurricane cleanup and flood insurance, two very reliable growth sectors, and he’s working on picking up a few hundred acres of cheap land in Miami lying j-u-u-ust above sea level. When the Magic City’s downtown finally turns into a new Atlantis, the whole waterfront is going to be Gore-owned. Hey, I tried to warn you SOBs, so cry me a river if my portfolio gains value while you’re stuck fighting over the last gallon of gas. Maybe you can seek shelter from the dust storms by hiding your family in the ruins of the George W. Bush Presidential Library. Or, you could run to your precious supreme court and ask them to make a 5-4 ruling against desertification.

Related

Wednesday
Tonight, I delivered my usual speech before a university crowd: Sky into darkness. Moon into blood. Death and fire and vapour of smoke. Of course, I always like to end the talk with a message of hope. I predict that humanity’s battered survivors may be able to find refuge on an island in the Canadian Arctic and resurrect the species while subsisting off the bone marrow of their fallen brethren.

My aides tell me the PowerPoint presentation is starting to feel a bit out of date, so I’ve replaced it with a 20-minute animation of a polar bear slowly tearing apart a family of five in Maine. Oh, you didn’t hear that melting sea ice was forcing man-eating bears into heavily-populated southern hunting grounds? How about that.

Thursday
What’s that? The Canadian Minister of Natural Resources has a problem with me accusing their oil sands of using the atmosphere as an open sewer? Oooh, if I don’t watch my step, I guess I’ll be getting polite-but-firm letters from their Department of Losing Hockey Teams. Choke on a beaver tail, Canada. Any dumbass could sit on a mountain of oil and trees and pretend to know how to run an economy. Not Gore: This tycoon made his fortune from sound ethical investments. For my next project, for instance, I’m producing a reboot of the Beverly Hillbillies. In this one, instead of discovering bubbling crude, Jed stumbles upon a thriving solar concern.

Friday
I made an appearance at a western Tennessee state fair where my submission to the Guess the Jelly Bean in the Jar contest was rejected due to a technicality. Although my guess of 871 jelly beans was extremely accurate, judges discounted my guess on account of five candy corn kernels that had made their way into the jar. Before I could demand a recount, the fair’s governing board had unanimously handed the jar to a 12-year-old girl with a guess of 866. Well … by late afternoon, I had bought up the entire fairgrounds, demolished all the outbuildings with carbon-neutral electric bulldozers and put up a wind farm. I’m warning you, America, I’m not playing around anymore.

Foreign policy issues will dominate the rest of U.S. President Barack Obama’s tenure, his government will continue to stagnate and the Keystone XL pipeline will be approved, predicts Robert (Bob) Shrum, a senior Democrat political consultant.

He expounded on politics south of the border while sitting in the lobby of a modern hotel in downtown Calgary Thursday; this was his first visit, he said, and he found himself struck by the view of the mountains and the vibrancy of a city that reminded him of Houston

“I notice a type of apprehension, even paranoia about what’s going to happen to the Keystone pipeline,” he said in an interview before his appearance at the Teatro Speaker Series, which is sponsored by the National Post, later that evening.

“I think Barack Obama, on his record, does what he says he’s going to do.”

AP Photo/Manuel Balce CenetaProtestors gather at the National Mall in Washington calling on President Barack Obama to reject the Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada on Feb 17. The pipeline has become a contentious, albeit largely symbolic issue for U.S. and Canadian environmental activists.

Mr. Shrum says the president refused TransCanada’s previous application only because the Republicans had backed him into an ultimatum that would give the government too little time to consider route alternatives through the sensitive Ogallala aquifer.

“There were concerns on the route that it goes over, it needs to go on a new route, that needs to pass an environmental review and if it does pass … he will approve it. And I think some people in his own base will get very angry with him,” he said.

Indeed. The pipeline has become a contentious, albeit largely symbolic issue for U.S. and Canadian environmental activists. The most extreme believe it would spark development in the oilsands that would ultimately destroy the planet.

Mr. Shrum said the president’s approach is more moderate: Mr. Obama is a leftist, but he’s pragmatic. Fossil fuels will be part of the energy mix for a long time to come.

THE CANADIAN PRESSThe Alberta government is continuing to press its case for the Keystone XL pipeline by taking out an ad, shown in this handout image, in the New York Times.

His words carry some weight: the veteran consultant is a regular columnist for The Daily Beast and Slate; he teaches at New York University in Abu Dhabi; and his speechwriting and political consulting credentials stretch back to the 1970s.

What he doesn’t have is a solid track record of being correct. He worked on eight presidential campaigns, from George McGovern and Michael Dukakis to John Kerry and Al Gore — and all of them lost, leading some in Washington to suggest there is a “Shrum curse.”

“Some people who don’t like me stuck me with it. I don’t particularly care about it,” he said.

“When I was a speechwriter for George McGovern, I was hardly in charge of that campaign, and if I was, we would have lost anyway.”

As for Mr. Gore, he “did get elected. He just didn’t get inaugurated.”

Regardless, his time advising potential presidents is well behind him now. It’s time for the Democrats’ next generation to take over, although Mr. Shrum is not eliminating the possibility of a 2016 presidential run by Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden.

AP/J. Scott ApplewhiteNew Jersey Governor Chris Christie.

On the Republican side, he thinks New Jersey Governor Chris Christy could offer either of them a fair fight — if he weren’t saddled by a reputation for being too moderate.

“It’s going to be a majority non-white nation. It’s going to be a nation where women are much more independent, much more equal, where they have many more rights than they did in the past. And it’s going to be a nation that respects gay and lesbian rights, and I think that’s tough for a lot of people.”

In comparison, Canadian conservatives have managed much electoral success by abandoning right-wing positions on abortion and gay marriage.

AFP PHOTO / Saul LOEBSAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty ImagesThe entire political apparatus is at a stalemate, Robert Shrum said. That will leave the President Barack Obama with little to do except to focus his attention on the growing foreign policy crises in Syria, Iran and North Korea.

Until they follow the same path, the Republicans will continue to fail on the presidential ballot. Meanwhile, government as a whole will stagnate in the face of obstruction in the House of Representatives.

The entire political apparatus is at a stalemate, with the House refusing to let Mr. Obama score any kind of win, Mr. Shrum said. That will leave the president with little to do except to focus his attention on the growing foreign policy crises in Syria, Iran and North Korea.

None of it sounds like a lot of fun.

“There’s a stasis in American government. People talk about Obama as a lame-duck president. Actually what we have right now is a lame-duck government. We can’t move on almost any of the issues,” he said.

But for all it’s troubles, Mr. Shrum said, nobody who runs for president ever seems too keen to give the job back.

On leadershipIn a somewhat disjointed piece in the Montreal Gazette, Brian Mulroney laments Mackenzie King’s indifference to the plight of the Jews in Europe, casting it as a profound failure of leadership in the face of “political expediency.” (But Mulroney also says that Mackenzie King “had a visceral distrust of Jews,” so it really seems like more of a failure of insight than one of leadership.) This segues into an appreciation for Stephen Harper’s leadership with regards to his staunch support for Israel. We can’t argue with the staunchness. But how much has he really sacrificed for that? Can anyone one really claim, with a straight face, that Harper is one who forsakes “popularity” for “leadership” on tough issues? One who — as Mulroney describes a prime minister’s proper role — “tell[s] Canadians not what they want to hear but what they have to know”?

The show of backbench force on Parliament Hill for Thursday’s pro-life rally amounts to “the closest we’ve seen to a mass mutiny in [Stephen] Harper’s seven-plus years in power,” Postmedia’s Michael Den Tandt argues. “These are MPs who simply don’t care, any longer, about what penalty they may suffer for their lack of discipline.” This is a threat not just to party unity, Den Tandt suggests, but may cause some voters to stay home in the next election sooner than reward Harper for his steadfast refusal to engage what is, to them, an important issue. We think Harper, and the party, should just learn to live with having a pro-life wing the way conservative parties all over the world live with it. He doesn’t have to indulge it. He just has to stop trying so overtly to crush it under his heel.

TheGlobe and Mail‘s Jeffrey Simpson suggests that Albertan and federal leaders might have had more luck sending bitumen through adjacent jurisdictions had they employed a cooperative and consultative approach with said jurisdictions, rather than just assuming “that everyone else desperately needed [the oil]” and jumping down the throats of anyone who dissented.

Rick Salutin, writing in the Toronto Star, suggests that this state of affairs speaks to the decline of salesmanship as much as the decline of statesmanship. “Resources Minister Joe Oliver is the Willy Loman of this drama, without Willy’s panache,” says Salutin. He calls Oliver’s attacks on Al Gore “ludicrous,” because Gore “lack[s] any personal, financial interest for undermining Canadian oil” … which seems like an awfully bold statement.

Michael Harris, writing for iPolitics, rather amusingly suggests that “Thomas Mulcair suffers from the defect of his best point: He is a man of substance. In order to like him, you have to try harder, know more, read more.” Yeah, we really don’t think he’s that deep. But perhaps the NDP can release some recommended reading under an Appreciating Tom Mulcair syllabus.

Paul Wells of Maclean’s isn’t sure there’s much that’s horribly wrong with the way Canadian children are taught history and, pace Andrew Coyne, thinks there is something to the idea that our history is “not that exciting.” “Try telling a Russian that it’s Canadian teachers’ fault if Canadian history seems dull,” he suggests. “How many died in the Battle of Kursk? A quarter of a million? We have to get our kids excited about the Winnipeg General Strike.”

In the Globe, Bob Robertson imagines Canadian history as rewritten by the Conservatives and in so doing proves Full Pundit’s Golden Rules: No one who calls himself a “humour writer” is actually funny.

The National Post‘s Jonathan Kay suggests that instead of staying home and sniping at Israel like “a quantum-mechanical version of Naomi Klein,” Stephen Hawking should go to the conference from which he has withdrawn and air his grievances from the stage. And then Kay thinks Hawking should go to Gaza and the West Bank, where he can speak on the notable plight of disabled people, especially women, in Palestinian society.

The Globe‘s Marcus Gee quite rightly excoriates Toronto city councillors for demanding a debate on new transit-funding tools, then deciding to reject most, endorse none and ask the province to tinker with plans they had already approved and give them a whole bunch of money as well. An absolute disgrace.

William Watson, writing in the Financial Post, reveals that Montreal is preparing to replicate Toronto’s over-regulated food cart fiasco — albeit with some added spice. In the midst of the Charbonneau Commission hearings, “we’re going to give a committee empowered with just about full discretion control over who gets nine potentially very lucrative vending locations?” he asks. Is that a good idea?

The Post‘s Matt Gurneyjuxtaposes two court cases involving police officers: In one case, a police officer kicks a man, whom he knows to have a brain injury, in the head for no reason whatsoever, and gets an 18-month suspended sentence. In the other case, a woman spits at a police officer and receives three months in prison — despite the fact that the Crown and the defence had agreed on an 18-day­ sentence. Cops “deserve our gratitude and, in most cases, our respect,” says Gurney. “But they don’t deserve their own law. … How could the courts have forgotten this?”

There was always a slight odour to the deal in which former U.S. vice-president Al Gore sold his struggling cable channel to Al Jazeera, the Qatar-based Middle East broadcaster. And it’s not going away.

Initial criticism of the sale focused on the hypocrisy of Gore, who owes much of his considerable wealth and fame to his high-profile role as globe-trotting environmental campaigner, selling out to a broadcaster controlled by the government of Qatar, an oil-rich country run by an absolute monarchy that gets its wealth from the very product Gore blames for the horrors of climate change.

Gore reportedly stood to make $100 million from the sale of his Current TV, and pushed to have the deal close before the end of last year, so he could avoid the higher rate of tax due to take effect under President Barack Obama, a fellow Democrat. He defended the sale by claiming Al Jazeera provided top-notch coverage of climate issues, and insisted that both Al Jazeera and Current were founded “to give voice to those who are not typically heard; to speak truth to power; to provide independent and diverse points of view; and to tell the stories that no one else is telling.”

Just before buying Gore’s channel, the emir visited Gaza, where he pledged $400 million to its Hamas rulers.

That claim is looking a bit dubious these days, as some of Al Jazeera’s top talent has been deserting the network amid claims it has become a shill for its Qatari owners and other Middle East autocrats. Spiegelonline, the web version of the German newsmagazine, has a lengthy report on the departures, which it says includes reporters and anchors from Paris, London, Moscow, Beirut and Cairo. Though previously lauded for its willingness to confront Middle Eastern regimes, it says, since the advent of the Arab Spring it “has shamelessly fawned upon the new rulers.”

Today, when Egyptians protest against President Mohammad Morsi and the rule of the Muslim Brotherhood, Al-Jazeera is often critical of them, in the style of the old pro-government TV station. Conversely, according to ex-correspondent [Aktham] Suliman, Al-Jazeera executives have ordered that Morsi’s decrees should be portrayed as pearls of wisdom. “Such a dictatorial approach would have been unthinkable before,” he says. “In Egypt we have become the palace broadcaster for Morsi.”

It reports that the Emir of Qatar, who visited Gaza in October and pledged $400 million to Hamas, its terrorist rulers, is increasingly intolerant of independent voices:

A prominent correspondent who, until one year ago, used to report in Beirut for the network, says: “Al-Jazeera takes a clear position in every country from which it reports — not based on journalistic priorities, but rather on the interests of the Foreign Ministry of Qatar,” he says. “In order to maintain my integrity as a reporter, I had to quit.”

Critics say that the emir now essentially trusts only his own people: The network’s director general is now a relative of the emir, as is the head of the advisory board. They are seemingly required to follow political guidelines laid down by the palace — instead of serving the interests of viewers. Thanks to its oil wealth, Qatar is blessed with the world’s second highest per capita income, and it’s a key geo-political player with a clear agenda.

Signs of disaffection were evident even before the sale of Current TV closed. In September, Britain’s The Guardian reported that staff members had protested after being ordered to re-edit a UN report to give more prominence to the emir.

Al-Jazeera’s editorial independence has been called into question after its director of news stepped in to ensure a speech made by Qatar’s emir to the UN led its English channel’s coverage of the debate on Syrian intervention.

Journalists had produced a package of the UN debate, topped with excerpts of President Obama’s speech, last Tuesday when a last-minute instruction came from Salah Negm, the Qatar-based news director, who ordered the video to be re-edited to lead with the comments from Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani.

Despite protests from staff that the emir’s comments – a repetition of previous calls for Arab intervention in Syria – were not the most important aspect of the UN debate, the two-minute video was re-edited and Obama’s speech was relegated to the end of the package.

The emir’s visit to Gaza came just a few weeks later, the first visit by a head of state since Hamas gained control in 2007. Al Jazeera paid $500 million for Current TV not for its audience — it averaged just 40,000 on most nights — but because it can be viewed in 40 million U.S. homes. The idea was to provide a conduit to U.S. viewers for independent-minded coverage of the Middle East. But an organization increasingly aligned to the political agenda of an all-powerful Qatari emir, and friend to Hamas, may find it difficult to muster much enthusiasm among a U.S. audience, even if it has a friend in Al Gore.

Al Gore, the former U.S. vice-president, says he sold his struggling cable channel to Al Jazeera because the Middle East-based broadcaster carries lots of news about climate change.

“It’s climate coverage has been far more extensive and of high quality than any of the networks here,” he said.

Maybe that’s because Al Jazeera was launched with financing by the emir of Qatar, an oil-rich state on the Persian Gulf run by an all-powerful hereditary royal family that gets its fortune from oil and gas. Gee, don’t oil and gas have something to do with climate change? Yes, I’m sure of it: according to no less a source than Al Gore, former U.S. vice-president, the oil industry is responsible for much of the greenhouse gas emissions that he says are at the heart of climate change.

So, if I understand this correctly, Gore is selling his struggling station to a network that operates under the purview of an oil-rich state that is responsible for the climate change he rails against, but he figures it’s OK because the station at least does a good job of covering the damage. According to that logic, if BP Oil were to buy NBC or CBS, they could dump as much oil into the Gulf as they want, as long as they do a good job of reporting the result. If only they’d known; buying NBC would probably be a lot cheaper than the clean-up plan BP had to but into effect after its 2010 oil spill.

Oh, and Gore also because he stands to collect an estimated $100 million out of the deal. Not that Gore would put his personal profit ahead of the well-being of the planet. That’s what oil companies do! And Al Gore’s not an oil company; he doesn’t even like oil companies. He’s even critical of U.S. networks that take advertising from oil companies.

Fortunately he doesn’t have to worry about finding ads any more. Because he’s got all that money from the Arab oil producers.

Re: MD Training, Public Need Don’t Match, Study Finds, Jan. 7.
Tom Blackwell’s article on a shortage of doctors in some fields of medical practice ignores “the elephant in the room.” For many years now, Canada’s population of female doctors has been growing at a far greater rate than its male doctors. This is also the case here in Australia and in the U.K., as women are more likely to earn the marks to get into medical faculties.
As the father of two female doctors with young children, it’s a simple fact that these young mothers need time with their offspring. Therefore, they tend to choose jobs with rostered hours: accident and emergency, neonatal pediatric care, intensive care, in a general practice polyclinic. When they “clock off,” they are off duty and can attend to their families. No concerns about being called away.
Of course, Canada (and Australia) now have a shortage in the specialties Mr. Blackwell identifies — cardiac surgery, neurosurgery, plastic surgery, orthopedic surgery, general surgery, etc. These is not rostered work. You can be called out any hour of the night and might have to work more than 12 hours some days.
Canada, like Australia, needs to train more doctors, including more men, if this problem is to be overcome. Stop the political correctness of ignoring “the elephant in the room” — only women can have babies, and female doctors, like my daughters, want to have their own babies.Dr. Peter Arnold, former chairman, Federal Council, Australian Medical Association; former Deputy President, New South Wales Medical Registration Board, Sydney, Australia.

We can’t predict the future

Although it may not be ethically or fiscally responsible to train individuals without a knowledge of workforce requirements, this absolute knowledge is unfortunately impossible to have. This is well demonstrated by this article which quotes both a projection of a deficit in the number of pediatric infectious disease specialists graduating (by the paper’s authors), and a current surplus (by the head of the Royal of Physicians and Surgeon’s health policy department) without acknowledging the contradiction. I would prefer to believe that rather than a lack of commitment, the problem is an inability to predict the future in many spheres, health care included. Dr. Heather Shapiro, associate professor, Vice Chair Education, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, University of Toronto, Centre for Fertility and Reproductive Health, Mount Sinai Hospital, Toronto.

Our children’s hospitals are competently staffed

This article leaves the impression that there is a serious shortage of pediatric sub-specialists and that Canadian children will be put at risk as a result. That is simply not the case. The data are not definitive: rather they are designed to give trainees an approximate idea of what positions are likely to be available in the university-affiliated children’s hospitals in the next five years and they are updated on an annual basis. We would like to reassure the public that Canada’s children’s hospitals are competently staffed and continue to provide superb care to those in need. Dr. Denis Daneman, president, Pediatric Chairs of Canada; Professor and Chair, Department of Pediatrics, University of Toronto; Pediatrician-in-Chief, The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto.

Maybe med school dollars have to be spent better

According to a new study, there is an astonishing mismatch between the number of medical specialists being trained in Canada and the number actually needed. The study shows that in some fields we are training almost twice as many as we need; in others, only half the number required.
This kind of problem is by no means limited to medical training. Universities, for example, are producing far more graduates in some fields than can find employment in the specializations they have chosen, while major shortages of workers exist in other areas such as the trades.
Immigration advocates often cite large and recurrent labour shortages as the justification for bringing in large numbers of immigrants and temporary foreign workers. Research shows however that, if we made better use of our existing human resources and our educational and training facilities, we could respond to gaps in the labour force without having to import many workers from abroad.
Since extensive public funding is required in almost every area of education and training, it is time to examine closely how we can ensure that the money spent on education and training serves more effectively the needs of Canadians and not just the preferences of the students and institutions involved. Martin Collacott, spokesman for the Centre for Immigration Policy Reform, Vancouver.

How do we resolve the native issue?

It’s a complex situation, but condense your answer into 75 words or fewer by Jan. 11 at 2 p.m. EST to letters@nationalpost.com, with responses to be published on Jan. 14.

Quebec and its tourism problem

Re: A Right, Not A Privilege, editorial, Jan. 5.
From your editorial, I take it that the language issue in Quebec, while abhorrent, has not changed appreciably since the mid-’80s. At that time, as part of a group of Western Canadian, English-speaking men, I attended a business conference in Montreal, where we also toured the Olympic Stadium. We were told the tour was in French only (even though almost all of us were anglophones) and that an English-narrated version would take place in a couple of hours. Our loss; we didn’t understand very much of what was said, as beautiful and awe-inspiring as the stadium was.
Kind of makes the average person wonder what they might do about the problem. Not much, I’m afraid, although there is one area — that “untold number(s) of tourists” thing this editorial mentioned. I can help ease that problem — as I have been doing since this ill-fated tour. Gary Paul, Mill Bay, B.C.

We need the right to self defence

Re: Attacked By Fire Bombers, Then His Own Government, Matt Gurney, Jan. 5.
In the case where a property dweller takes armed defensive actions against an intruder, the policy has been: “Charge the homeowner with something.” Even when the charges don’t stick, the process is the punishment — years in court and tens of thousands in legal costs.
We need a specific castle doctrine law that, in legitimate cases of self-defence, grants immunity to the property-dweller against criminal charges and civil suits. This type of law prevents the “second assault,” in the courtroom, on victims. And when people can defend themselves appropriately like Ian Thomson did, that discourages criminals from attempting these crimes in the first place, and makes it less likely that the criminal will succeed if he does.
Second, the “unsafe storage” offence that Mr. Thomson was charged with is so vague that it is frequently used as a go-to catch-all charge against otherwise law-abiding firearms owners. It entails a criminal record, property seizure, and potentially a jail sentence.
The firearms storage laws should be repealed. What constitutes “safe storage” depends on the owner’s circumstances. Truly careless storage that leads to harm could be addressed as criminal negligence. Tricia Simmons, Toronto.

Al Gore and climate change

Re: Al Gore, Friend Of The Petro-State, Rex Murphy, Jan. 5.
What’s Rex Murphy’s point about global warming? Shooting the messenger doesn’t change the message.
A recent review by Dr. James Powell, a former scientific advisor to presidents Reagan and Bush Sr. of over 13,950 peer-reviewed published scientific papers found just 24 that dissented to the assertion that fossil fuel emissions are a major contributor to climate change. That is to say, you have 20 times more chance of finding someone who believes aliens walk among us than finding a published climate scientist who disagrees that climate change is upon us and that fossil-fuel emissions are a major contributor.
With or without Al Gore, that fact doesn’t change (unfortunately).Ian Edwards, Toronto.

We should all be troubled by Al Gore’s stunning financial rise. He and his acolytes have made their lucre the same way all good con-men fill their pockets: by making naive people suspend disbelief long enough to pay good money for a sack of hair. His own carbon-spewing lifestyle may be necessary to spread his word around the globe, but his hypocrisy is all the more salient when viewed through the multi-billion dollar regulatory fog his fabulist dogma has created. Darcy Charles Lewis, Calgary.

Shaking in B.C.

Yet another quake rocked B.C.’s northwest early Saturday. Thus, whenever the hollow assurances of “pipeline safety” or similarly such are brought up by oil sands/pipeline proponents, it should be noted that there can never be true pipeline safety. One need only consider what a major tectonic-plate shift — which B.C. is overdue to experience would do to the proposed Northern Gateway twin pipelines. They’d breach, to put it mildly, leaving behind detrimental environmental consequences, very potentially throughout countless pristine and eco-sensitive regions of B.C.
Of course, there’s also the issue of our northern coast and its waters that are at risk by giant oil-tankers. Frank G. Sterle, Jr., White Rock, B.C.

Wrong about misogynistic India

Re: How India’s Rape Culture Came To Canada, Afsun Qureshi, Jan. 3.
As Indians across the world collectively cry in horror over the brutal assaults in recent memory, National Post readers are treated to an inflammatory article by Afsun Qureshi whom extrapolates her “personal experience” on to a country of 1.2 billion, a diasporic community of more than 20 million in 110 countries, in of the Earth’s oldest nations.
Ms. Qureshi’s piece misses on many accounts. Her casual overlooking of the historical regional influences, the north differing greatly from the south, the rural-based agrarian communities clashing against the booming cosmopolitan cities like Mumbai and Bangalore. Her failure to distinguish between arranged marriages with forced marriages, with research consistently showing that the former has higher rates of success and happiness than love marriages. Her disregard for the widely revered Indira Gandhi, considered one of India’s best prime ministers ever, inspiring a wave of females in public service, as witnessed by the 42% of successful candidates being women in the state of Goa’s 2012 elections.
Perhaps the “progressive” West needs to look at its increasing rates of economic inequality, disintegration of the family unit (divorce and out-of-wedlock childbirth), secularism and narcissism before assessing the “cultural-based misogyny” of a nation. Roland Mascarenhas, Toronto.

Martin’s musings

Re: Idle No More Activists March On, Jan. 7.
Was former prime minister Paul Martin referring to the leaked Deloitte report that severely criticized Theresa Spence’s bookkeeping practices, when he referred to her as “an inspiration to all Canadians”? On the other hand, perhaps it was the Liberal party’s rectitude in handling public money (i.e., the sponsorship scandal) that inspired Ms. Spence.
Birds of a feather …. Ron Freedman, Toronto.

Pee on the bee

Re: Helping Males To ‘Hit The Mark,’ letter to the editor, Jan. 7.
Letter-writer John Koot notes that “the Dutch found a unique way of focusing the male’s attention [at urinals] — by giving him something to aim at. They painted a fly in the porcelain, slightly off centre so that the aim had to be manually directed.”
Although a fly may be appropriate in this context, I always heard that it was a bee that the Dutch etched in their urinals, at least in an academic setting, the latin name for a bee being apis. L.T. Dawson, Vancouver.

God and football

Re: God Doesn’t Care About The Game. But His Mother Does, Father Raymond J. de Souza, Jan. 7.
Father Raymond J. de Souza stated that “Notre Dame is ranked No. 1, God is in His heaven and all must be right with the world, no?” This, along with his mention that the Fighting Irish’s star linebacker is a Mormon, reminded me of an old joke that the good Father may or may not appreciate.
One of the Pope’s top aides rushes in to see his holiness and excitedly announces that he has good news and bad news. “What’s the good news?” asks the Pope. “The good news is that Jesus has returned, He’s on the phone and wants to talk to you” replies the aide. “That’s terrific” replies the Pope, “what’s the bad news?” “He’s calling from Salt Lake City” says the aide.
I know the Brigham Young University Cougars won their bowl game this year; I hope Notre Dame will be able to do the same. James McComb, Edmonton.

‘I feel trapped in my own body’

Re: Our Alzheimer’s Crisis, In Tragic Microcosm, editorial, Jan. 6.
I have personal experience of what your editorial is talking about, with a twist. I am suffering from some sort of brain condition (which has not been diagnosed — I call it the “Hughes Syndrome”), but I don’t have dementia. I can no longer walk or speak, I have great difficulty moving in bed at night, I have problems eating and swallowing, and my right arm is useless (I’m right-handed).
These are just a few of my symptoms, which first appeared in September 2011, and have deteriorated rapidly since. I am still at home, though this places unbelievable pressure on my wife, who is 20 years younger than me (I am 70) and still working. But deep down, my brain is still intact, and as a retired professor I’m continuing with my research. The worst thing is, I feel trapped in my body. Alun Hughes, Thorold, Ont.

Open your eyes to electric cars

Re: Tesla’s ‘Magical’ Electric Car Is Not A God, David Booth, Jan. 4.
We’ve been led to believe that dinosaurs succumbed to extinction millions of years ago, with fossil fuel and a few bones being the remnants of their legacy. Alas, one apparently survives and works as an automotive journalist at the National Post.
For the past several months, David Booth has peppered us with negative commentary on the electric vehicle, suggesting it’s time has “come and gone.” What he fails to comprehend is the age of fossil fuel as a means of powering personal travel is what has “come and gone.”
Electric vehicles hold the promise of transportation from renewable sources of energy, and allow much higher levels of efficiency when converting energy to motion (in the area of 85% for electric vs. 25% for internal combustion). We need to allow time for the technology to evolve and we need to be exploring, testing and helping shape this evolution through daily use and participation.
At one time, the image of David Booth alongside his article fit the “cool” aspect of vehicle review. The shades, firmly set jaw and offset gaze taking one back to the big block era. Take the blinders off, David. The future is in renewable energy and advanced technology, not million year old flora and fauna. Jay Heaman, Woodstock, Ont.

Anyone who could come with a few hundred votes of being elected president, win both a Nobel prize and an Academy award, and amass a fortune estimated at $100 million in just a decade of trying, must be a pretty smart guy. So maybe the environmental industry has something to learn from Al Gore, who is selling his struggling cable channel to al-Jazeera, the Middle East-based news network financed by the government of Qatar.

Al-Jazeera will pay a reported $500 million for Current TV, which Gore helped establish as a hoped-for left-wing alternative to Fox TV. His personal profit has been estimated between $70 million (Washington Post) and $100 million (New York Times). That could double his current estimated net worth. At the time of his loss to George W. Bush in 2000, says the Post, he was worth $1.7 million.

Gore is taking a lot of flack over the deal, just as he took a lot of abuse in the past over the perceived hypocrisy of his environmental views. The Oscar-winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, which focused on his efforts to educate the world about the perils of climate change, was criticized as inaccurate and misleading. He established himself as an international environmental guru while occupying vast, wasteful personal estates and flying around the world on emission-spewing jets. Now he’s making a fat profit by doing a deal with a network many Americans feel is biased towards some of the country’s fiercest enemies.

That charge may be misguided. Al-Jazeera certainly views the world from an Arab perspective, but that doesn’t make it unfair. The more accurate criticism of the sale lies in the nature of the network’s ownership. The very basis of Gore’s message is the danger of a world that continues to consume fossil fuels with unbridled abandon while ignoring the damage being done; now he’s selling to a country run by an absolute monarchy bloated by profits from its vast oil and natural gas holdings. According to Britain’s The Independent, Qatar has the largest per capita carbon footprint in the world.

But there’s an even greasier part to the deal than that. Current TV was never much of a hit, averaging only about 42,000 prime-time viewers in the last quarter, a pittance compared to Fox’s 2.5 million or even CNN’s 896,000. (Bloomberg says al-Jazeera’s existing audience for its English network totals about 250 million in 130 countries, but few in the U.S.) Current’s real value came from its ability to command a cable presence despite its tiny viewership, thanks to Gore’s connections and clout. The New York Times reports that Gore was able to negotiate a lucrative deal — from Fox owner Rupert Murdoch no less — that ensured Current TV received a steady revenue stream even though almost no one was watching. It’s that access that al-Jazeera is buying, not the content of Gore’s unpopular cable channel.

The former vice-president, says the Times, further aided the deal by personally lobbying discontented cable companies from dropping the channel. Even at that, several U.S. reports indicated al-Jazeera badly overpaid for the acquisition, which Mr. Gore tried to hurry through before year-end so he wouldn’t get nailed by the higher taxes on wealthy Americans being sought by President Barack Obama. At $500 million, the Qatari royals are paying seven times the original 2004 purchase price.

It’s all just good business, after all, and Gore can argue that he’s simply playing by the rules as he finds them. He may oppose Big Oil, but as long as it exists, what’s the problem is extracting a bit of their wealth for himself? It’s a valid claim but it completely contradicts his own environmental argument, and that of Big Environment as a whole. Most people in western countries would like to reduce emissions and are willing to do what they can. That’s not good enough for Big Environment, which insists people have to be forced into using less by jacking up taxes, scuttling pipelines or turning producers like Alberta’s oilsands into political pariahs. Mr. Gore won his awards and attracted his renown by siding with the environmentalists. But now that there’s maybe $100 million in it for him, he’s discovered he can live quite cozily with a few autocratic oil sheiks, even if they have to release a few more megatonnes to cover the cheque. It’s not a message he’s likely to promote in public, but his actions say everything that needs saying.

At the pinnacle of Al Gore’s fame and influence, he was a much jet-travelling man, going from continent to continent, earning huge fees, to give his explosive and exaggerated Powerpoint presentation about the threat of apocalyptic global warming.

There was profit in his prophecy. The man who lost to George W. Bush had picked himself up and turned his crusade into a business. He was here. He was there — lobbying for green initiatives, pushing wind and solar, boosting the notion of carbon credits. He was, as we say today, a huge global brand.

He was also a hero to all who think right. He achieved that rarest of two-fers: The Norwegians gave him a Nobel Prize, the Hollywood sybarites gave him an Oscar. He was a man of peace, and rubbed shoulders with James Cameron. How rich can life get?

He had his own energy company, was appointed to all the right boards and there was not a global conference worth getting on a personal jet for, that did not feature Al’s furrowed brow and finger-pointing apocalyptics.

Along the way, in the service of broadening his already impressive propaganda effort, he acquired — from CBC no less — a digital channel, renamed it Current TV, and hired as lead star the belligerent and bellowing Keith Olberman, the latter fresh from being fired from MSNBC. For Canadians not familiar with Olberman, let us just say he is a partisan broadcaster, shallow and perpetually frenzied, compared to whom Bill O’Reilly is a Zen mystic.

Current was to be the great munition in the war to persuade the world of the perils it faced. But despite the best wishes of Matt Damon and half the cast of Charlie’s Angels, the channel never went anywhere. Some claimed it had a viewership of only 40,000. Olberman did what he does best: got fired.

Now comes the latest news that Al has sold Current, for the magnificent sum of $500-million, $100-million of which is his alone. Not bad for a TV station with less reach and inferior programming to most billboards.

Qatar is about oil, oil and more oil. It is a global warmer’s hell

To whom did the Lord of the Upper Atmosphere sell? Why to al Jazeera — which is to say, effectively to the ruler of Qatar, a wealthy country that has nothing else to sustain it but the sale of its huge petroleum resources.

Qatar is about oil, oil and more oil. It is a global warmer’s hell.

Surely there is some pill too tough to swallow in the idea of the world’s greatest alarmist on the subject of global warming, the evils of petroleum economies and the menace of fossil fuels accepting half-a-billion dollars from a state that utterly epitomizes the practices and product he most evangelistically despises.

But consistency or moral fortitude in the face of profit does not seem to be part of Al’s personal Powerpoint.

One other, not-to-be-missed note: Mr. Gore was very quick to make sure the sale took place before the New Year — the better to spare him, who is now one of the world’s superrich, his friend Barack Obama’s tax hike on those dreadful one-percenters.

American conservatives and Jewish leaders are up in arms over former vice-president Al Gore’s sale of Current TV to Al-Jazeera, accusing the noted climate change activist of everything from hypocrisy to lining his pockets with cash from anti-Americans.

Right-wing radio host Rush Limbaugh has been at the forefront of the attacks, pointing out that Gore sold his pet cable network to an Arab news giant owned by the royal family of oil-rich Qatar, an OPEC regime.

He also asked if some of the female hosts on the left-leaning cable news network, including Joy Behar and Jennifer Granholme, will “now have to wear burkas and veils over their faces?”

Fox News personality Bill O’Reilly piled on, maligning Gore for selling to the “anti-American” Al-Jazeera before the Jan. 1 hike in the U.S. capital gains tax.

A former vice president selling his far-left cable network to anti-Americans, then trying to jam the deal to avoid higher taxes

“This is really stunning,” O’Reilly said this week. “A former vice president selling his far-left cable network to anti-Americans, then trying to jam the deal to avoid higher taxes.”

O’Reilly called Gore a “hypocrite,” pointing to the one-time Democratic presidential nominee’s assertions in a November interview that people “like me should pay our fair share.”

Gore reportedly decided in December to sell Current to Al-Jazeera for US$500 million, pocketing an estimated $100 million personally in the sale. He had previously turned down an offer from the right-wing The Blaze network, rebuffing its owner, conservative pundit Glenn Beck, because of his politics.

American Jewish leaders are also expressing concern that Al-Jazeera could gain access to tens of millions of American homes via the Current TV deal. They accuse the network of anti-Israeli coverage and supporting extremist Islamic regimes.

“Al-Jazeera has a troubling record and history that is very disturbing, particularly in its Arabic language broadcasts,” said Abe Foxman, head of the Anti-Defamation League, said in a statement from the organization on Friday.

“It has exploited and exaggerated the Arab-Israel conflict in a heavy-handed and propagandistic manner, and always at the expense of Israel, while giving all manner of virulent anti-Israel and even anti-Semitic extremists access to its airwaves.”

Justin Sullivan/Getty ImagesA woman walks by the Current TV offices in San Francisco, California. Former U.S. vice president Al Gore sold his cable TV channel Current TV to Arab news channel Al-Jazeera for a reported $500 million.

“Their general coverage has served to destabilize regimes and favour some of the more extremist elements in the Arab world,” he said.

Al-Jazeera has fought to gain a foothold in the U.S. market because of the refusal of many American cable providers to carry it. Time Warner, the second-largest cable company in the U.S., dropped Current TV after the sale to Al-Jazeera was confirmed earlier this week.

The news network is readily available on most major Canadian cable providers, including Rogers and Bell, after Ottawa approved the channel for distribution three years ago.

Americans turned on Al-Jazeera following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when it gave al-Qaida mastermind Osama bin Laden a broadcasting platform. But in recent years, it’s earned praise from some U.S. officials, in particular Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who lauded its coverage of the so-called Arab Spring.

Karim Jaafar / AFP / Getty ImageAl-Jazeera's English channel presenters prepare a newscast in the newsroom at the headquarters of the Qatar-based satellite news channel in Doha.

The brouhaha about Gore’s sale to the network comes as the Republican party confronts anti-Muslim sentiment among some of its lawmakers. The soul-searching follows last November’s presidential election, when three of the party’s most vocal anti-Muslim legislators were defeated.

Even anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist, a hard-right conservative on fiscal issues, has acknowledged the need for the party to evolve in terms of attitudes towards Muslims.

The tipping point appears to have come in July, when Minnesota congresswoman Michele Bachmann and four colleagues suggested the State Department had been infiltrated by the Muslim Brotherhood thanks to Huma Abedin, a respected aide and longtime friend to Hillary Clinton.

John Boehner, speaker of the House of Representatives, and Sen. John McCain were among the prominent Republicans who assailed Bachmann for her allegations.

Al-Jazeera, the Pan-Arab news channel that struggled to win space on American cable television, has acquired Current TV, boosting its reach in the U.S. nearly ninefold to about 40 million homes. With a focus on U.S. news, it plans to rebrand the left-leaning news network that cofounder Al Gore couldn’t make relevant.

The former vice president confirmed the sale Wednesday, saying in a statement that Al-Jazeera shares Current TV’s mission “to give voice to those who are not typically heard; to speak truth to power; to provide independent and diverse points of view; and to tell the stories that no one else is telling.”

The acquisition lifts Al-Jazeera’s reach beyond a few large U.S. metropolitan areas including New York and Washington, where about 4.7 million homes can now watch Al-Jazeera English.

Al-Jazeera, owned by the government of Qatar, plans to gradually transform Current into a network called Al-Jazeera America by adding five to 10 new U.S. bureaus beyond the five it has now and hiring more journalists. More than half of the content will be U.S. news and the network will have its headquarters in New York, spokesman Stan Collender said.

To provide independent and diverse points of view; and to tell the stories that no one else is telling

Collender said there are no rules against foreign ownership of a cable channel – unlike the strict rules limiting foreign ownership of free-to-air TV stations. He said the move is based on demand, adding that 40 percent of viewing traffic on Al-Jazeera English’s website is from the U.S.

“This is a pure business decision based on recognized demand,” Collender said. “When people watch Al-Jazeera, they tend to like it a great deal.”

Al-Jazeera has long struggled to get carriage in the U.S., and the deal suffered an immediate casualty as Time Warner Cable Inc., the nation’s second-largest cable TV operator, announced it is dropping Current TV due to the deal.

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“Our agreement with Current has been terminated and we will no longer be carrying the service. We are removing the service as quickly as possible,” the company said in a statement.

Previous to Al-Jazeera’s purchase, Current TV was in 60 million homes. It is carried by Comcast Corp., which owned less than a 10 percent stake in Current TV, as well as DirecTV. Neither company announced plans to drop the channel.

In 2010, Al-Jazeera English’s managing director, Tony Burman, blamed a “very aggressive hostility” from the Bush administration for reluctance among cable and satellite companies to show the network.

Even so, Al-Jazeera has garnered respect for its ability to build a serious news product in a short time. In a statement announcing the deal, it touted numerous U.S. journalism awards it received in 2012, including the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award Grand Prize and the Scripps Howard Award for Television/Cable In-Depth Reporting.

Al-Jazeera / AFP / Getty ImagesAl-Jazeera, owned by the government of Qatar, plans to gradually transform Current into a network called Al-Jazeera America by adding five to 10 new U.S. bureaus beyond the five it has now and hiring more journalists.

But there may be a culture clash at the network. Dave Marash, a former “Nightline” reporter who worked for Al-Jazeera in Washington, said he left the network in 2008 in part because he sensed an anti-American bias there.

Current, meanwhile, began as a groundbreaking effort to promote user-generated content. But it has settled into a more conventional format of political talk television with a liberal bent. Gore worked on-air as an analyst during its recent election night coverage.

Its leading personalities are former New York Gov. Elliot Spitzer, former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm and Cenk Uygur, a former political commentator on MSNBC who hosts the show called “The Young Turks.” Current signed Keith Olbermann to be its top host in 2011 but his tenure lasted less than a year before it ended in bad blood on both sides.

Current has largely been outflanked by MSNBC in its effort be a liberal alternative to the leading cable news network, Fox News Channel.

Current hired former CNN Washington bureau chief David Bohrman in 2011 to be its president. Bohrman pushed the network to innovate technologically, with election night coverage that emphasized a conversation over social media.

Current TV, founded in 2005 by former vice president Gore and Joel Hyatt, is expected to post $114 million in revenue in 2013, according to research firm SNL Kagan. The firm pegged the network’s cash flow at nearly $24 million a year.

In 1960, John F. Kennedy looked like the perfect presidential candidate — a confident, articulate war hero and (so far as the world knew) the kind of dedicated family man voters adore. His opponent, vice-president Richard Nixon, was far less alluring. He had a furtive air, so clearly nervous in public that he seemed to have something to hide.

Kennedy seemed the obvious winner. And when elected, he became a truly impressive leader. His eloquent speeches gave Americans a fresh sense of their national destiny. After his assassination, when his widow remarked that the title song from Camelot had been a favourite of his, a generation of journalists adopted it as shorthand for the his regime. His thousand days in office went into history as “one brief, shining moment.”

He now appears so imposing that when he’s discussed one of the crucial facts of his political life is almost always forgotten: Kennedy came close to losing the 1960 election, closer than any other president in history.

This year it seems obvious to partisans on both sides that in November the American electorate will tilt one way or the other, firmly renewing its faith in Barack Obama, or electing the Republican candidate by a clear margin. Columnists and political operatives see the electorate moving decisively. After all, a democracy relies on the people to speak clearly in times of national crisis.

But history demonstrates that the system often doesn’t work that way. In 1960, many Americans believed their country was in danger of falling behind. The Soviet Union’s 1957 launch of Sputnik, the first artificial satellite in orbit, undermined confidence in American technology and education. Moreover, the Eisenhower era had ended with a recession. Kennedy promised “to get America moving again.”

Nevertheless, Kennedy beat Nixon in the popular vote by only 0.17%, or 112,000 votes out of 34 million. And there was a lingering belief, particularly among Republicans, that the voters had actually chosen Nixon; In two key states, Illinois and Texas, there were many credible accusations of voter fraud.

On election night, early-reporting polls encouraged The New York Times to pronounce Kennedy the winner in a midnight edition. The managing editor, Turner Catledge, said in his memoirs that as the numbers kept changing during the early morning hours, he just kept hoping that “a certain Midwestern mayor would steal enough votes to pull Kennedy through.” He was anxious to avoid repeating the famous blunder of the Chicago Tribune, which in 1948 announced Thomas Dewey had beaten Harry Truman. The mayor whom Catledge had in mind was Richard J. Daley of Chicago, whose machine was known to manufacture election results as demanded.

But Kennedy’s victory soon became established fact and his popularity became accepted as part of conventional wisdom, along with Nixon’s lack of appeal. In private conversation one day in the early 1960s, Marshall McLuhan informed me that Nixon’s calamitous failure on television was the crucial factor in the result. “Nixon is hopeless — a problem for Central Casting.”

“But Marshall, he damn near won!”

McLuhan then explained that it was so close only because many voters found Kennedy’s Catholicism objectionable.

Perhaps. But he won many otherwise conservative Catholic’s votes, probably as many as he lost because of anti-Catholic bigotry.

Nixon figured in two other narrowly decided presidential elections. In the crisis year of 1968, when the Vietnam war was dividing the country and black districts erupted in rage over the murder of Martin Luther King, Nixon finally became president by a margin of just 0.7%. He received 31.7 million votes to 31.3 million for vice-president Hubert Humphrey.

The Watergate scandal destroyed Nixon’s career during his second term, and hideously embarrassed all those Republicans who had enjoyed his patronage. After succeeding Nixon, vice-president Gerald Ford tried to win the presidency in his own right — and, burdened as he was by Watergate, he came within a couple of percentage points. He received 39.1 million votes to the 40.8 million of the Democrat, Jimmy Carter, a difference of 2.06%.

The 2000 election produced the oddest and most contentiously argued result. Al Gore received 50,999,897 votes to George Bush’s 50,456,002 votes. But Bush became president with the help of the electoral college and a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Bush’s presidency, like Kennedy’s and like Nixon’s first term, demonstrated the one unstated but all-powerful rule governing the American executive branch: Once installed, the president is the president, free to exercise all the rights that come with the office, no matter how marginal or dubious his victory.

Remember all of this eight months from now, after U.S. voters have elected president Romney or Santorum, or re-elected President Obama. Thousands of pundits will confidently opine on the inevitability of the result. The numbers will tell another story.

National Post

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/robert-fulford-presidential-elections-are-a-close-run-thing/feed/0stdUS-ELECTIONS-NIXON-KENNEDY-DEBAT-265351Kelly McParland: It’s a bad time to be a billionaire in the Republican partyhttp://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/kelly-mcparland-its-a-bad-time-to-be-a-billionaire-in-the-republican-party
http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/kelly-mcparland-its-a-bad-time-to-be-a-billionaire-in-the-republican-party#commentsThu, 12 Jan 2012 16:24:59 +0000http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/?p=63560

Maybe it’s a bit of a stretch, but you could argue that Canada’s Liberal party and the U.S.’s Republican party are facing a similar dilemma: neither is entirely sure what it believes in any more, and both could be doing permanent damage to themselves in the process of trying to find out.

The Liberals are probably the more endangered as a viable entity, given that they not only can’t explain what they stand for, but don’t even seem sure how to go about finding out. But it’s the Republicans who are providing the more spectacular show, as they seem intent not so much in defining new beliefs as in tearing down old ones without having a replacement.

Tasha Kheiriddin offers a thoughtful look at the situation in a piece written from New Hampshire, where Mitt Romney won the primary and Newt Gingrich decided to get even by laying waste to what were generally taken to be Republican ideals.

He’s been busy trying to annihilate Romney for the crime of capitalism. He wants the former Massachusetts governor condemned for the crime of wealth in the first degree. While head of Bain Capital, he points out, Romney helped buy up struggling companies, strip them, fire thousands, and cash in big time as a result. This makes Romney a corporate raider, a destroyer of jobs, a heartless money-grubber and a man who exploited the darker opportunities of free enterprise to enrich himself at other people’s expense.

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Which, of course, he is. Is anyone supposed to be surprised? This is Romney’s second campaign for the nomination. His background has been examined more closely than the entrails of a frog in a high school science class. Did Newt Gingrich, or anyone else in the Republican party, not know what Romney did for a living?

The answer is that they did, but until now few in the party thought there was anything wrong with it. Capitalism can be cutthroat. It can be nasty. Some people get really, really rich while stepping all over less driven individuals. This never seemed to bother Republicans before. They celebrated the culture and ideals it represented: the untrammeled right to get rich by taking risks and using your brains. It wasn’t fair, but fairness has never been central to right-wing views on the economy, which are more likely to celebrate the seizing of opportunities, and displays of individual initiative.

REUTERS/Rainier EhrhardtMarching on: U.S. Republican presidential candidate and former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich arrives at a Spartanburg County GOP luncheon in Spartanburg, South Carolina, Wednesday.

Gingrich isn’t alone in suddenly assailing this comfortable orthodoxy, but he’s leading the charge. In doing so he finds himself oddly aligned with the Occupy movement, which, in its disorganized way, tried to make the same point. The 1% was just a catchy slogan meaning people like Romney, i.e., not just rich, but rich through exploitation and an uncaring attitude towards others. Wall Street, after decades of rewarding itself with ever-greater displays of avarice, has become a byword to many for crassness and corruption. Among the surprises of the Bernie Madoff scandal wasn’t just the astonishing extent of his dishonesty and callousness, but that he was such a vulgar little schmuck. How does one aspire to greatness in the finance industry when it harbours such revolting deadbeats?

Gingrich’s war, and the depths at which the Tea Party movement now finds its popularity, suggests there just might be a long-term change going on in how Americans perceive wealth and the wealthy. It’s always been a sin to question the right to get rich or the superiority of unbridled free enterprise. There are lots of economies based on free enterprise, but the U.S. has always been the freest and least apologetic. In Canada we get all sniffy about CEOs who make $10 or $15 million a year; Tim Cook, who took over from Steve Jobs at Apple, made $378 million in 2011.

Even Democrats didn’t really question the rightness of this, perhaps because so many of them were just as rich. John Kerry and Al Gore, both recent Democrat nominees, are well up in the top 1% of the top 1%, and live like pashas while declaring their sympathy for the little folk. Barack Obama, who has a few million from book sales, is a comparative pauper compared to the Democratic Rockefellers and Kennedys.

But Americans don’t seem to be buying into the adulation of conspicuous consumption the way they once did. Plutocrats went through a similar period of bad odour during the Depression. It’s OK to gawk admiringly at the wealthy when the middle class is thriving, but it loses its attraction when much of the country can’t be sure of meeting the mortgage any more. And this is the fourth consecutive year of Americans worrying about losing their homes and jobs on a national scale.

Gingrich’s latest claim is that Obama can’t be beaten by a moderate (i.e. Romney) and that only a real conservative (ie Gingrich) can do that. He might have it backwards. If Newt really believed his own words, he wouldn’t be busy painting Romney as a Grade A capitalist, and suggesting there was something wrong with that.

Santa Claus and his company are no longer at the North Pole! There’s something of an all-points bulletin — or whatever is the polar equivalent — out on the famous Claus household. The whole batch of them, consisting of the familiar Santa, his wife (first name unknown) Mrs. Claus, and the band of elves with whom, apparently, the Clauses (chastely) cohabit, are missing and presumed wet.

Our authority for this is no less than the renowned David Suzuki Foundation, which has sounded the alarm and asked for money to help the great jolly Christmas icon relocate. Its new web site, http://www.wherewillsantalive.ca, claims that, thanks to global warming, “The North Pole is no longer safe for Santa’s workshop.” It also shows Suzuki, done up in elf gear, escorting Santa’s sled as it floats in the waters off the decaying polar ice.

Where they are now, at the beginning of December, is of course every Christmas-yearning child’s first question. Could they all have been scuttled off by Al Gore, and hidden in the mega-mansion of his New York Times buddy Tom Friedman, whose house has the square footage of the entire state of Delaware? Do you think he might have hitched up Rudolph and sledded off to the Durban climate-change conference? Who knows?

The David Suzuki Foundation is the only group that seems to be aware of Claus’s predicament. “Save Santa from climate change by supporting the David Suzuki Foundation,” they exhort us. And when you click around, you find that the site is peddling all sorts of knickknacks. Yet the money is not going to Santa.

“Think of everything Santa has done for you,” we are told. “Now is your chance to help him.” But it’s unclear to at least one adult how, whatever Santa may have done for the children of the world, it should somehow rebound to the credit or benefit of the David Suzuki Foundation. Unless all these years we’ve been missing something, and it’s been David himself behind the great white beard.

All this may seen merely petty, but it is troublesome nonetheless. What the Suzuki Foundation is doing is sending out a scare notice to children everywhere that Christmas is in jeopardy, Saint Nick adrift and lost, making the fate of both of them dependant on giving to the cause. I’m not saying what the Suzuki Foundation is doing is immoral. I will say they have given new life and vigour to the word “tacky.” Scaring kids and guilting parents is monumentally tacky.

I don’t want to be around for the Easter campaign: “Kids, we’ve got the bunny. If you want to see old floppy ears again …”

Remember: It’s all for global warming, so it has to be ethical.

National Post

Rex Murphy offers commentary weekly on CBC TV’s The National, and is host of CBC Radio’s Cross Country Checkup.

The 17th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change that begins this week in Durban isn’t expected to see much progress in replacing Kyoto.

For those who believe that the Kyoto process is politically dangerous, economically destructive and based on dubious science, this is a good thing. Nevertheless, there is bound to be plenty of hand-wringing over the failure of rich countries to hand over more cash to poor ones as “compensation” for the climate catastrophe to come. This is one of the reasons why Al Gore and Archbishop Desmond Tutu maintain that climate change is a “moral issue.” The psychological roots and practical consequences of this claim have received much less attention than they deserve.

Lord Andrew Turnbull, a former head of the British Civil Service, has become profoundly concerned about the corruption of climate science by moralism. “There is a strong alignment,” he told me, “between those who subscribe to anthropogenic global warming as the preponderant driver of climate change, and those whose view of the world is fundamentally anti-market and anti-capitalist. Read more

To Al Gore’s power-sucking mega-mansion we can now add Michael Moore’s vast estate on the lake.

Gore was accused of hypocrisy for building himself a massive home many times larger than any one person could require, while criticizing others for wasting energy and using up more than their fair share of the earth’s resources.

Moore is a leading supporter of the Occupy movement, who eviscerates the wealthy while sharing their wealth, and lives in the sort of luxury he despises in others. Britain’s Daily Mail prints pictures of Moore’s lavish “second home” on Torch Lake in Michigan, where he lives near a number of other wealthy entertainers and corporate titans.

The photos, first posted by conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart, show a mammoth log and glass home with extensive grounds and lengthy waterfront exposure. The Daily Mail wrote:

Local real estate agents estimate the real value of the compound at $2 million, according to The Michigan View.
It places the property near the top one per cent of home values in the Forest Home Township and in the state of Michigan. The township is roughly 98 per cent white residents, according to statistics from 2009.

It’s no secret that Moore has made millions from his muckraking documentaries, and there’s no reason he shouldn’t have. As one of the most successful documentary film-makers ever, he’s successfully tapped a rich vein of anti-capitalist rhetoric that sells well among U.S. liberals.

Alliance FilmsPerhaps the best joke came from Carl Gunnarsson, who when describing a puck that hit his finger in a game on Friday kept with team policy and said, “right now it’s a mid-body [injury]. But picking my nose, it’s an upper-body [injury].”<!--more-->
Now that was funny.
That other stuff — the mock chants of “sixty-seven” or calling them the Maple Laughs — are not. Or rather, they seem ill-timed at this point in the season. Laugh all you want about the veil of secrecy regarding player injuries or the team’s past failures, but the Toronto Maple Leafs no longer seem like the Charlie Browns of the NHL.
Sure, this is a team that has gone six years (seven if you include the lost 2004-05 season) without qualifying for the playoffs and last won a Stanley Cup when Lester B. Pearson was the prime minister. But as general manager Brian Burke likes to say, all that is in the past. The Leafs, who defeated the Anaheim Ducks 5-2 late on Sunday night, are now the second-best team in Eastern Conference, with the league’s top-two scorers in Phil Kessel (31 points) and Joffrey Lupul (tied with 29).
Two months in, they no longer seem like the punchline to a joke, but are rather a team that the rest of the league is taking seriously.[np-related]
“The standings after U.S. Thanksgiving, you sort of know who you are,” a Western Conference general manager said. “The Leafs might not be one of the two best teams in the conference, but they’re in that next cluster of teams. That’s a good sign. I certainly think they’re for real.”
The Leafs, who went 3-1-0 on this four-game road trip, did not do anything to disprove that notion with their third straight win on Sunday night.
While Toronto spotted Anaheim a 1-0 lead on a power-play goal from François Beauchemin, the Leafs went ahead 2-1 after Tyler Bozak and Clarke MacArthur scored 19 seconds apart. A third goal in as many games from Joey Crabb put Toronto up 3-1 early in the second.
The Leafs, who were 8-0-0 when leading after two periods, seemed destined to pick up the two points. Just as it looks like they are destined for a playoff spot.
This could all change, of course. Toronto plays the red-hot Boston Bruins in back-to-back games this week, having already lost by a combined score of 13-2 to the defending Stanley Cup champions. They appear to be a team headed for the playoffs. And yet, because we have been fooled so many times in the past, part of us keeps waiting for Lucy to yank the ball and for the beleaguered team to end up on its back again.
The Leafs started last season 4-0-0 only to be sucked into a November tailspin that they would not get out of. This year, when the team got out to a similar start, critics pointed out Toronto’s schedule had been one of the easiest in the NHL.
That may be true. Their opponent Sunday night, the Ducks, had won just once in their last 13 games. Still, give the Leafs credit for winning these so-called easy games. As a result, the Leafs stand above five teams — the New York Rangers, Buffalo, Washington, Tampa Bay and Montreal — that made the playoffs last year. And they have been doing it with a shorthanded lineup.
The Leafs, who have been without their No. 1 goaltender since Oct. 22, have lost 80 man-games to injury this season. Any other year that would have spelled disaster. But from Crabb to Joe Colborne to Keith Aulie, the team keeps reaching back into the minors and finding NHL-ready players who can fill holes.
It says a lot about the team’s depth when defenceman Cody Franson, who scored eight goals in 80 games with Nashville last season, is only playing because Mike Komisarek is injured. Last year, Tyler Bozak was the No. 1 centre because there were no other options. This year, he is earning his spot, with his second two-goal game of the week on Sunday to give him 16 points in 22 games — half of what he finished with in all of last season.
And then there are Kessel and Lupul, who combined for three assists and have given Toronto a one-two scoring punch that has not been seen around here since Doug Gilmour and Dave Andreychuk were filling opposing nets.
“Anytime you get a guy leading the league in scoring and another guy on the fringe, you’re going to win hockey games,” the Western Conference general manager said. “The evolution of Phil Kessel and the resurgence of Joffrey Lupul are big reasons why they are where they are. I think that they’re probably deeper than people realized.”
No one would go as far as to call the Leafs a Cup contender. Not yet anyway. But for the time being, you can confidently say that they look like they should make the playoffs and not hear snickering.
<em>• Email: <a href="mailto:mtraikos@nationalpost.com">mtraikos@nationalpost.com</a> | Twitter: <a class="twitter-follow-button" href="http://twitter.com/Michael_Traikos">Michael_Traikos</a></em&gt;

What puts Moore in the Gore camp is his refusal to admit he shares the wealth of his targets, as if wealth and success in themselves are dishonourable. In an interview with CNN’s Piers Morgan he quails when asked to admit “the bleeding obvious”, i.e. that he’s a member of the 1%.

“How can I be in the 1%?” Moore responds. “Even though I do well, I don’t associate myself with those who do well. I am devoting my life to those who have less and have been crapped on by the system.”

Here’s the conceit: Moore, and the Occupy movement, happily lump all wealthy people into one big pot and condemn them for the mere fact of having money. Being among the 1% is enough in itself to deserve Moore’s condemnation and that of the people occupying tents across the U.S., and Canada.

REUTERS/Mark BlinchMichael Moore has made millions from his muckraking documentaries

Neither Moore nor his supporters will concede that not all wealthy people are greed-driven charlatans from Wall Street, or that many of them — probably the majority — give generously to those in need. Just as generously as Moore himself. The two wealthiest men in the U.S., Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, have combined to support a foundation that will give tens of billions of dollars to education, health, science and to development causes in the world’s poorest countries. It’s far more than Moore could ever hope to give.

Moore tars everyone with the same brush, exempting only himself, and on the self-serving basis that he doesn’t “associate” himself with the 1%. So, if he makes millions of dollars and lives like a pasha, but sympathizes with the downtrodden and doesn’t “associate” himself with his fellow millionaires, he’s not really a rich white man with a big house? Yet he’s free to lambaste other millionaires, many of whom may be far more generous than him. Why? Because they don’t wear a baseball cap on TV? Is the determining criteria for membership in the hated 1% a willingness to wear a tie?

Moore would be much more worthy of respect if he were more honest, and acknowledged his own wealth and lifestyle if he wants to condemn others. Success is nothing to be ashamed of, or justification for the kind of public ridicule Moore likes to direct towards it. The real evil is greed, and the corruption that often accompanies it. But greed is not a private preserve of the wealthy, and isn’t nearly as easy a target as the crime of being rich.

Ontario’s Liberals seem to have decided that if no one else is going to sing their praises, they might as well do it themselves. Consequently, the pages of the party’s election platform, released Monday, read like one long pat on the back.

It’s amazing how many people (many of whom don’t live in Ontario) think Premier Dalton McGuinty and his crew are doing a great job. Al Gore thinks Ontario has “the single best green energy program on the North American continent.” (page 13) A mid-level bureaucrat at the OECD says advances in Ontario have been “astounding!” (page 15) A consulting group says Ontario has the best schools in the entire English-speaking world. (page 6). David Suzuki thinks the money Ontario has committed to its green energy plan is just about the greatest thing ever (page 27) and the corresponding Conservative plan is “absolute insanity.” (Page 41). A software executive insists Ontario under McGuinty has become one of “the most business-friendly environments in North America (page 9).

Everything is wonderful, apparently. McGuinty’s Green Energy Act is “one of the boldest moments in history.” (page 8) Jobs are being created left, right and centre — more than the entire rest of the country combined. (page 9). The promise to close coal-fired power plants is working admirably, even though it’s twice had its deadline delayed. (page 10). It’s easier to get a doctor, there are more hospitals than there used to be, surgical wait times are the lowest in Canada (even if no one seems to have noticed.) Former Tory Premier Bill Davis thinks Mr. Guinty’s all-day kindergarten should have been done years ago (page 17). Fraser Mustard is delighted that someone (ie. Dalton McGuinty) had the courage to put it in place. (page 19).

The government has done such a great job, it’s a wonder they even have to campaign at all. But they have an explanation for that: If the Conservatives form a government they will undo all the progress the Liberals have made and return Ontario to the dark ages, decimating health care and education. “The PCs and NDP are stuck in the past. If this were 1911, they’d be fighting for the horse and buggy. In 2011, they’re fighting for gas guzzlers and coal. The world has moved on, but they haven’t.” (page 15) The Liberals have been making this claim about the Tories — that they hate education and health care and will starve them of funds — for some time, without offering any explanation of why we should believe it. Tory leader Tim Hudak has matched the Liberals’ spending promises on health care dollar for dollar. A child raised by two teachers, he’s similarly pledged to maintain education spending.

But the Liberals say it anyway. Because the Tories can’t be trusted, unlike the Liberals, who have broken promise after promise but maintain they are the sort of reliable party we need to continue into the future. An executive at a firm that makes solar equipment (and that got a $3 million loan from the government) is worried that the Tories will close off the subsidy spigot “when the economies of scale have not yet been realized.” (page 23) “Ontario is building the innovative products and services the world wants,” the platform insists. (page 24) It’s just that unfortunately the world doesn’t want enough of them yet, so the government has to keep pouring in millions of dollars in subsidies.

The platform includes a great deal of boosterism for the subsidy program, as the Liberals try to get voters as enthusiastic about it as they are. It’s going the create tens of thousands of jobs. It’s going to attract billions in investment. It’s going to establish a whole new industry to replace Ontario’s dwindling manufacturing base. All that’s going to happen someday — yes we can! — but for now no one’s making any money, so it’s up to the government to keep everything on track by paying the bills. And you don’t want the Conservatives to wreck that, which is what will happen if they get into power and stop sending out the cheques.

Great as things are, they’re going to be even better if Mr. McGuinty is returned to the premier’s office. The government is going to make sure even fewer people smoke cigarettes. It’s going to make sure every school child gets a healthy snack. It’s going to create a Council on Childhood Obesity to reduce the number of overweight kids. It’s going to give more money to seniors so they don’t end up in the hospital. It will spend more money on transit, even though it’s already “turned public transit around” (page 42), a claim that may come as a surprise to many voters in Toronto, where a key issue in last year’s mayoral race was dissatisfaction with the lousy transit.

Nevermind that. Despite all his reversals and broken promises, Mr. McGuinty “is a man of his word,” (page 47). Despite the brilliant successes of the Liberals’ first eight years, these are “tough times” — though that’s not Mr. McGuinty’s fault — and his plan is the kind we need: “Bold, decisive, undaunted in the face of tough choices and focused on what our families need to succeed.” The Liberals’ campaign slogan should be: “Vote for what we say, not for what we do.”

Canadian author and activist Naomi Klein was among dozens of protesters arrested Friday in front of the White House as part of a two-week protest against TransCanada Corp’s cross-border Keystone XL oil pipeline project.

“Just released from police custody at anti-tarsands action in DC. Proud to have been arrested with so many great people,” Ms. Klein wrote on Twitter Friday afternoon.

Just released from police custody at anti-#tarsands action in DC. Proud to have been arrested with so many great people. #nokxl

She later told the CBC that she hadn’t intended to be arrested since that could complicate her future plans to travel to the U.S., but said she was inspired by the speeches of native Canadian leaders who had travelled to Washington D.C. to oppose the project.

“We heard from the people living downstream, who are dealing with having their land spoiled, who are dealing with outbreaks of disease and cancer, and it was just so moving that I really felt the need to stand with them in solidarity,” she told the broadcaster.

Gitz Deranger of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation in Alberta was also arrested in the protest Friday, a group called the Indigenous Environmental Network said in a statement.

Protesters have gathered in front of the White House daily for nearly two weeks pressure U.S. President Barack Obama to reject the proposed 2,700-kilometre pipeline, which would carry nearly 900,000 barrels a day of oil from the Alberta oil sands to Texas refineries.

Nearly 700 people have been arrested since the protest began late last month, including actresses Daryl Hannah and Margot Kidder. Former vice-president Al Gore has also urged the president to reject the proposed pipeline extension.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/naomi-klein-arrested-in-washington-d-c-oilsands-protest/feed/2stdCanadian author Naomi Klein was arrested as part of an anti-oilsands protest in front of the White HouseToday’s letters: The culture of abortionhttp://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/todays-letters-the-culture-of-abortion
http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/todays-letters-the-culture-of-abortion#commentsThu, 01 Sep 2011 13:29:30 +0000http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/?p=49249

richard johnson / national post<strong>By Colin Fly</strong>
MILWAUKEE — The biggest momentum swing for the Milwaukee Brewers involved no swing at all.
<!--more-->Jonathan Lucroy — "Mr. Squeeze" to his teammates — drove in the go-ahead run with a bunt and the Brewers broke away from the Arizona Diamondbacks 9-4 Sunday to take a 2-0 lead in their NL division series.
"It's a free RBI if you execute and I really work hard to get that down," Lucroy said. "A safety squeeze, all you've got to do is get it down to the right area."
Ryan Braun hit a two-run homer and fellow slugger Prince Fielder added an RBI single for Milwaukee. But the brawny Brewers excel in other ways, especially Lucroy.
"The little things matter," said Jerry Hairston Jr., who scored on Lucroy's bunt. "When you have guys like Braunie and Prince with the big power, the little things add up."
Indeed.
The Brewers now hold a 2-0 lead in a postseason series for the first time in franchise history and will go for the sweep when Shaun Marcum takes on rookie Josh Collmenter in Game 3 in Arizona on Tuesday.
Lucroy keyed a five-run sixth inning, and delivered right after Diamondbacks reliever Brad Ziegler became angry about a balk call. That's when rookie Milwaukee manager Ron Roenicke put on a play — he'd already seen Lucroy successfully bunt a few times this season.
"Good teams always take advantage of the other team's mistakes," Braun said. "There's no doubt coming into that inning, they had the momentum."
With the score 4-all and runners at the corners with one out, Hairston took a couple of half-steps and sprinted home as Lucroy bunted toward first base. Ziegler's awkward flip went wide of catcher Miguel Montero and the Diamondbacks imploded from there, with Milwaukee taking a 9-4 lead.
"It was crazy," Montero said. "I didn't even get a chance to second-guess myself. It was like, 'OK, here we go — boom, boom, boom, boom.' I'm like, 'What's going on over here?"'
Brewers starter Zack Greinke struggled in his first postseason appearance, giving up three home runs and leaving without a decision. He was 11-0 at Miller Park, helping the Brewers win a majors-best 57 games at home.
The Diamondbacks seemed poised for a come-from-behind victory after notching 48 this season when Paul Goldschmidt, Chris Young and Justin Upton all homered off Greinke to tie the game.
Instead, Arizona went 0 for 10 with runners in scoring position and Milwaukee kept its cool until the sixth, when seven consecutive batters reached with one out.
Hairston, making his second straight start in place of Casey McGehee at third, doubled to chase Diamondbacks starter Daniel Hudson.
Ziegler entered, and was called for a balk when he spun and found no one behind Hairston for a pickoff attempt as he attempted to throw. Ziegler pointed down at his foot, upset at second base umpire Bruce Dreckman's call, and walked the free-swinging Yuniesky Betancourt on four pitches.
Ziegler said he was "somewhat curious" about what happened because he believed his footwork was proper.
"I honestly don't know what he called. I didn't ask him about it," said Ziegler, who didn't want to be ejected for arguing. "I didn't feel like I balked. I felt my (front) foot came down on top of the rubber, so I felt I was clear of my back foot at that point. It didn't matter after that."
Roenicke called for the squeeze, and Lucroy laid it down perfectly, just like he had on a suicide attempt on the final play of a 3-2 win against the Giants on May 28.
"When (Ziegler) made that off-balance throw he did, I knew it was a tough play to make," Lucroy said. "I got it down right."
Both Lucroy and Betancourt advanced on Ziegler's wild throw, pinch-hitter Mark Kotsay was intentionally walked to load the bases, and the momentum had swung by that point.
Corey Hart singled in a run, pumping his right fist down the line, and Nyjer Morgan brought in two more with a single that had him raising his arms in celebration before the play was even over. Braun's RBI single chased Ziegler and gave Milwaukee a 9-4 lead.
"They had the momentum after the home run," Hart said. "Jerry was pretty aggressive and 'Mr. Squeeze' always comes through, he always gets the bunt down and then you just try to take advantage. We found three holes right there and never looked back."
Greinke made his second consecutive start on three days' rest and Braun gave him a 2-0 lead in the first inning with a 438-foot homer, his first ever in the postseason. The Brewers took a 4-1 lead on Fielder's run-scoring single and Rickie Weeks' RBI triple in the third.
But Arizona chipped away.
Goldschmidt, the rookie who'd played most of the season at Double-A Mobile and was starting in place of Lyle Overbay, homered in the second and Young added a solo shot in the fourth.
Upton's tied it in the fifth when he hit a towering drive to the left-field bleachers that had Upton's mom, Yvonne, smiling amid the crowd of 44,066.
"We've been down before," Upton said. "If anybody knows this team, we're going to fight until this thing is over with. It's a special team we've got here. If anybody can come back and try and do this thing, it's us."
Milwaukee's bullpen of Takashi Saito, LaTroy Hawkins, Francisco Rodriguez and John Axford held tight again after posting a 1.14 ERA over 71 innings in September and all made it interesting.
With Greinke gone in the sixth, Saito worked around a man on third by striking out Gerardo Parra to keep it tied. Hawkins walked consecutive batters before getting out of the seventh. Rodriguez, the former Mets closer, walked Goldschmidt and allowed a broken-bat hit to Young to start the eighth, but neither came in to score.
Axford walked Aaron Hill and Montero, but struck out Goldschmidt to end it.
Hill went 3 for 3 with two walks. He had an apparent double taken away in the first inning by a missed call when left field umpire James Hoye called a ball off the wall foul after it flashed between sunshine and shadows in Miller Park.
Replays showed it was fair, and Hill singled on the next pitch and was stranded there, something that happened to 10 times to Arizona baserunners.
"When you go on the road, you want to at least take one. If you don't, you've got to go home and defend your own turf," Upton said. "That's the bottom line. That's what home-field advantage does for them. They played well at their home place, got two wins, but we've got to do the same thing."
NOTES: Braun and Fielder have combined to hit 9 for 16 with two homers and six RBIs in the first two games of the series. ... Robin Yount, the 1982 and 1989 AL MVP for Milwaukee, threw out the first pitch. ... McGehee had been 5 for 5 against Hudson in his career, but finished the season in an overall 3-for-45 slump. ... Collmenter (10-10, 3.38) matched the franchise record for wins by a rookie and joined Brandon Webb (2003) and Micah Owings (2007) as the only rookies in franchise history to reach 100 strikeouts. ... Marcum went 8-3 with a 2.21 ERA in 16 road starts. Marcum hasn't pitched on the road since Sept. 20, when he allowed one run in eight innings in a victory over the Cubs.

Re: Less Than Human, More Than Nothing, Chris Selley; Motives Matter In The Abortion Debate, Barbara Kay, both Aug. 31.
Pro-choicers who believe that the fetus is “less than human, more than nothing,” should check basic embryology textbooks. If the parents are human beings, the newly created embryo is certainly human with its own distinct DNA. That is science, not faith.
British abolitionist William Wilberforce succeeded in passing a law that banned not slavery, but the trading of slaves. Banning the shipping of slaves did not outlaw the immoral practice. Wilberforce and his supporters correctly believed that attacking the trading would lead to abolition of the practice.
Many pro-life people support legislation that would impose restrictions on abortion even if it doesn’t ban the practice. Any law that raises the issue and leads to public debate and discussion can only increase support for the protection of these little human beings.
So, thanks for this column, Mr. Selley. You are helping us change the culture. Joanne Byfield, Riviere Qui Barre, Alta.

I agree with Barbara Kay when she writes “Let’s get real on democratic “rights.” Freedom of speech is a right. Freedom of association is a right. Such rights are timeless and universal. They were not invented out of whole philosophical cloth 40 years ago.” Their timeliness and universality are rooted in our nature. The law behind these natural rights comes from the psychological and moral structure of the human being. Although we cover abortion with the word “right” it will always remain an unnatural right and therefore the illusion of a right, with all its predictable personal and societal consequences. Monique David, Montreal.

The abortion question, discussed by Chris Selley and Barbara Kay, assumes a time frame of conception to birth. But isn’t this artificially limiting the debate?
The early Romans did not consider a new-born child to be a person until the 10th day. Any defects that became apparent in that period usually resulted in the child being killed. Why not suggest the same for the pro-choice side, which would save all the bother of pre-natal sex determination.
At the other end of the spectrum, confining the start of life to the moment of conception is clearly artificial. Any unfertilized ovum is a potential life, so whenever a woman menstruates she is throwing it away. Now there’s a stick for the pro-life religious crowd: women should be barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen all the time. When we say pro-life, we mean pro-life. Roger Graves, North Gower, Ont.

Asbestos has been unfairly maligned

Re: CMA Attacks Ottawa’s Position On Asbestos, Aug. 25.
Alongside this story last week, the Post published a photo of the pit in Asbestos, Que., the town where I was born in 1923. The CMA has now hung its shingle of ignorance on the pit wall, through its decision to oppose the federal government as it contests the international designation of chrysotile asbestos as a hazardous substance.
The irrational fear of asbestos was spawned by a legion of class action lawyers. That led to the waste of millions of dollars and the destruction of countless buildings by ill-informed authorities.
I was schooled in Asbestos, Que. I served in World War Two, , staked the claim for the asbestos mine in Matheson, Ont., and worked in the mill at the Jeffrey mine of Johns-Manville in Asbestos, Que., until 1954. I have two brothers very much alive who were born in the same town. The care of handling the chrysotile mineral has been continually refined.
I challenge the CMA to research the lives of the Gardners, Morrisons, Shoemakers, Gallups, Smiths, Browns, Jansons, Gilberts, Jacksons, Piches, Martels, Gagnons, Dions and Wilsons, all friends who enjoyed living in Asbestos, Que. Daniel Sherry, Foster, Que.

Regular love will do in Somalia

Re: Somalia Needs Tough Love, letter to the editor, Aug. 30; Not Giving Money To Somalia, letter to the editor, Aug 26; Somalia Deserves Our Help, Brian C. Stiller, Aug. 24.
I was taken aback by two of the responses to Brian C. Stiller’s column, more or less indicating that it would be better for everyone if we just let the Somalis starve to death in refugee camps. Your letter writers ought to be ashamed. We live in country where food is so abundant that we have an obesity endemic. We have so many “things” that we need to rent extra storage units for them. And we don’t want give some of it up to people who have nothing? That’s a real eye-roller.
No doubt, there are major obstacles to overcome before Somalia becomes a functioning state, but I would rather be called naive and emotional than reserve myself to such an uncompassionate and hopeless attitude — not to mention, unCanadian. Robert Weiland, Toronto.

Can’t improve on God’s work

Re: Circumcision Not ‘Butchery,’ letter to the editor, Aug. 31.
Letter-writer David Spiro notes: “Circumcision is an art and a skill, but first and foremost a commandment from God.”
Is the rabbi saying that “God” simply make a mistake when he made human males (Jewish or otherwise) and that it is his responsibility to improve on his work?
Given that it is written that we are apparently made in the likeness of “God,” one would think that all of our parts are where they are meant to be, and that each has a valid function.
Just because there is a history of something being done is not a sufficient reason in and of itself for continuing to do it. Tony Duke, Fanny Bay, B.C.

God is missing from King memorial

Re: A Flawed Monument To A Great Man, Charles Krauthammer, Aug. 30.
Charles Krauthammer’s insightful thoughts on the new Martin Luther King memorial in Washington is brilliant. Mr. Krauthammer states that none of the quotes on the monument “are taken from the ‘I have a dream’ speech for understandable reasons of pedagogical redundancy.”
Unlike Mr. Krauthammer, I feel that this was King’s core belief and manifesto. At his heart, he was a Christian, although he would be the first to admit an imperfect one. His unforgettable closing words of that speech were: “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord,” the well-known lyrics of the Battle Hymn of the Republic.
King loved and worshipped God. Surely, this fact is essential to understanding the man. Alex “Sandy” Smith, Oakville, Ont.

Faulty ranking

Re: Highway The Least Of This City’s Woes, Brian Hutchinson, Aug. 31
It was disturbing to read that the Economist had dropped Vancouver from its #1 position among the world’s most livable cities, due to intermittent closures on the Malahat Highway, a mere 90 minute ferry ride plus a one-hour drive from Vancouver’s city centre.
Under these parameters, one wonders if Toronto’s lowly #4 position is due to intermittent closures caused by chunks of concrete falling from highways in Montreal. Norman Russell, Toronto.

Long-reigning heads of state

Re: The Four Seasons Of Gaddafi, by Daniel Pipes, Aug. 30.
As much as I appreciate Daniel Pipes’ political acumen, he is in need of a basic lesson in civics. He observes that Muammar Gaddafi was ruler of Libya for 41 years “making him the world’s longest ruling head of state.”
Queen Elizabeth II has been the head of state in the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth nations since 1953; that’s 58 years and counting. In all likelihood, the fact that Mr. Pipes is American explains his confusion. The United States is one of the few nations on Earth where the head of government and the head of state are, for better or worse, one and the same. Ian McVay, Brampton, Ont.

The origin of revolutions

Re: History, On The Rocks, Aug. 31.
Would someone please tell reporter Adam McDowell (and, possibly author Christine Sismondo) that revolutions are not fermented, but fomented. Fermentation takes place when yeast is added to sugar, producing alcohol and carbon dioxide.
No doubt much carbon dioxide (hot air) was created in the taverns of the United States, but it was not the fermentation process which created the American Revolution. Tony Hirons, The Merchant Vintner Ltd., Toronto.

I shed tears for Jack Layton …

Re: Tears For A Stranger, Jonathan Kay, Aug. 30.
I confess that I cried for Jack Layton, simply because his life and death moved me deeply. The energetic, hopeful, optimistic Mr. Layton (whom I did meet once) knew what his purpose was in life and did not hesitate to focus on his goal. Watching the celebration of Jack’s life in Ottawa and Toronto left me in sober reflection of my own 78 years, questioning what I have contributed to society.
Indeed, soul searching of one’s life is seldom awakened by the passing of another, but, I believe, that is part of Mr. Layton’s legacy too. Perhaps thousands feel the same way and will try to be a little kinder to one another. Thelma McGillivray, Burlington, Ont.

… I didn’t

Jack Layton deserved respectful mourning in his passing, but his death was not “a great national tragedy,” as some are saying. He will be truly missed by his party and his friends, but it is debatable as whether he deserved a state funeral.
I admired Mr. Layton’s qualities, but I did not shed tears over his death. Call me a savage, if you will, but I only cry for those who are near and dear to me. Ron Richardson, Toronto.

Jack Layton’s legacy (II)

Re: What Will Be Layton’s Legacy, letters to the editor, Aug. 30.
I remember when Winston Churchill died. He was old and past his time as a leader of nations, but he was a special man. His funeral was special.
I remember driving to work when I heard on the radio that John F. Kennedy had been shot. He never had the time to be the great leader Churchill was, but he could stir a nation.
I remember when Martin Luther King Jr. was killed. I didn’t particularly like him but his words could move mountains and mobilize people to follow him. Like Churchill and Kennedy, he will be remembered a long time from now.
Jack Layton was a nice guy and worked hard at what he did. But was he our Churchill, Kennedy or King? Did he lead our nation through a devastating war? Was he able to drag his country’s native people out of poverty and put them on the road to prosperity much like King did for the blacks in America? No, to both.
Some of us are unable to accept mediocrities as heroes. We can respect them, and sometimes admire them, but we can’t worship them. Maybe we should all just remember that most of these people are just giants of a lesser size. Ian Stout, Mississauga, Ont.

Letter-writer Merle Amodeo states: “we need to protect those who are pushed to the bottom rungs of our society by capitalism.”
My understanding is that capitalism, by providing employment, has allowed millions to get off the bottom rungs. I have seen drugs and alcohol push people to the bottom rungs, but not capitalism.
This letter seems to imply: “Let’s have socialism so there is no one on the bottom rungs,” which brings to mind a quote from Winston Churchill’: “the inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.” Jim Gehl, Calgary.

Al Gore, gored

Re: Global Warming’s Upside, letter to the editor, Aug. 30.
Many thanks to letter-writer Dorothy Horwood. As a biochemist, she is qualified to point out the lack of scientific evidence to support labelling carbon as a dirty greenhouse gas. It’s great that the National Post has such readers who can share their knowledge on these topics.
It seems that Al Gore and his followers have controlled the media because most journalists won’t do meaningful research to question their statements. Anne Robinson, Toronto.